Sunday 30 January 2011

Grand Duchy of Warsaw National Contingent



Once I have worked out how to do composite pictures in photoshop, I will hope to combine these two photos into one. I think they are worth posting as they are to try to give a better impression of these units together.

The latest National Contingent is that for the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Assembled from a number of different sources this contingent poses a few problems. These figures were already painted, to an extent, and based, in a number of different ways. They then needed to be reorganised into units and I painted around 30, mainly vintage, castings with a high proportion of officers, to complete these units, as far as possible matching the style of the other figures.

Also many of the figures are Alberken (later Minifigs 20mm). I decided to include them here to give a better impression of the whole contingent.

In theory it is based on Poniatowski's Corps in the Grand Armee of 1812, with associated units (Vistula Legion and Cavalry Reserve Corps units). I am fully aware that the consistency of basing, painting and finishing is not what I would want and at some point may revisit this, but for now i will look on this as a job done.

If I was starting again with all the figures unpainted and unbased (and I'm glad I'm not) I would maybe make sure I had all the units in the 5th Corps and forget the Vistula Legion. However, the Vistula Legion units also offer Peninsular service, which is a big plus.

I would particularly like to mention excellent service from Graham at Flags for the Lads, who acknowledged an e-mail order on a Sunday and posted it on Monday, so I received it on the Tuesday. My flags of choice are normally Rofur, but this option wasn't open for these units. Polish flags were generally tiny, so I went for Grahams large 25mm/28mm ones rather than their 15mm versions. I reduced the Vistula Legion ones (which are larger) but used the others as supplied - and am very happy with them.


I also thought it might be useful to post a picture of how I store Hinton Hunt figures. These trays are IKEA wardrobe inserts (sadly no longer available). If you want to stack them they won't work for some cavalry figures (too tall) and standards etc need to be laid on their side.

I'm also (finally) working on a cataloguing system for my Hinton Hunt units, using a spreadsheet, and unit identifiers using the stickers you can see in the tray partitions.

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